[sdiy] Professional magazine for EMI manuf. ?

[Richard Wentk]

At 15:22 06/01/2005, David J. Hughes wrote:
>Paul,
>
>on 6/1/05 9:19 AM, Paul Maddox at P.Maddox at signal.QinetiQ.com wrote:
>
> > To be honest, I've not found a decent magazine since 'E&MM' also the ES&CM
> > were great too.
>
>Yes, E&MM was my starting point. An excellent magazine.

I always thought it was rather cheesy with Mr Mike 'Home Organ Solo' 
Beecher at the helm. Their DIY projects always seemed a bit plinky plonky.

In comparison ETI was always the Gold Standard for synth DIY. I used to 
have every copy from around '76 to '83, and they were a treasure trove of 
ideas and techniques.

> > These days, I find very little of interest to read in any of them.
>
>I've often wondered if publishing a magazine like E & MM would be possible
>these days, given the capabilities of desktop publishing and Pre-Press
>systems these days.

It's hard to imagine something like it working today. None of the music 
tech mags in the UK have stellar sales. SOS is probably doing best, and I 
can't see Future closing FM or CM. The others are definitely struggling.

The problem is it's a much more diverse market, and you not only have most 
of the angles covered by the big three, but there are also webzines to 
compete with. Paper always has a long lead time in comparison, so most of 
the time you're literally printing last month's news.

Meanwhile DIY isn't a huge interest, and a lot of what interest there is 
has moved into the VST plug-in area. (Where there's a *huge* amount of 
activity - far more than for hardware DIY.)

I think it might be viable as a more formal web fanzine version of this 
list, where people wrote up their latest project in more detail than they 
usually do. But it would only work as a free fanzine run with minimal 
overheads. I can't see it working on paper because the overheads are still 
so high that there's absolutely no chance of breaking even until you start 
selling 20,000 copies a month - which is not going to happen for a subject 
like this.

Richard